30. Verses 14-17 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to make a distinction between the day and the night; and they will be for signs, and for set times, and for days and years. And they will be for lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to have dominion over the day, and the lesser light to have dominion over the night; and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

No one can have an adequate understanding of what 'the great lights' are unless he knows what the underlying essence of faith is and how it develops in people who are being created anew. The very essence and life of faith is the Lord alone. In fact it is impossible for anyone who does not believe in the Lord to have life, as He Himself has said in John,

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God will rest upon him. John 3:36.

[2] With people who are being created anew faith develops as follows: First of all they have no life, for life does not exist in anything evil and false but in what is good and true. Then they start to receive life from the Lord by means of faith - first by faith existing in the memory, which is factual faith, then by faith existing in the understanding, which is conceptual faith, and after this by faith existing in the heart, which is loving or saving faith. Factual faith and conceptual faith are represented in verses 3-13 by the inanimate, but faith made alive by means of love is represented in verses 20-25 by the animate. Consequently this is the first point at which love and faith deriving from it, which are called 'lights', are dealt with. Love is 'the greater light which has dominion over the day', and faith deriving from love is 'the lesser light which has dominion over the night'. And because they ought to make one the verb in the phrase 'let there be lights 'is singular and not plural.

[3] Love and faith have their place in the internal man as warmth and light do in the external, bodily man, and for this reason love and faith are represented by warmth and light. Therefore it is said that 'the lights' were set in the expanse of the heavens, that is, in the internal man - the greater light in his will and the lesser in his understanding. Yet they make their appearances in the will and understanding only as sunlight does in the objects it strikes. To the Lord alone belongs the mercy which moves the will with love and the understanding with truth or faith.

8985. 'And if the slave says plainly' means thought then springing from the implanted truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'saying' as thought, dealt with in 7094, 7107, 7244; and from the meaning of 'the slave' as truth without complementary good, dealt with in 8974, at this point this truth when it has been strengthened and implanted, since it is speaking of that slave when about to go out, 8984. 'The slave' is said to mean truth, though a person imbued with truth devoid of complementary good is meant. The reason for saying that 'the slave' means truth and not a person imbued with such truth is that when angels speak they do so in the abstract, that is, without envisaging actual persons. For in heaven they think about matters without envisaging persons, because when their thought involves persons it brings to mind a community associated with the matter they are thinking about; and when this happens their thought is narrowed down to and becomes fixed on that community.

[2] In heaven thinking about a place leads to being present in that place, and their presence in that community would attract towards itself the thoughts of those within the community, and so would disrupt the inflow from the Divine there. It is quite different when they speak in the abstract about some matter; their thought then spreads out in every direction in accord with the heavenly form which the influx emanating from the Divine produces, without causing disruption in any community. For it reaches into communities' general spheres, yet without having an effect on or unsettling anyone within the community, and so without impairing anyone's freedom to think in accord with the inflow from the Divine. In short, abstract thought can pass through the whole of heaven without hindrance anywhere; but thought narrowed down to persons or places becomes fixed and static.